Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you, colleagues. I didn’t get a chance to do my Member’s statement earlier but I wanted to speak a little bit today about the process that we’re in here right now. This is what we call the budget session. It’s the longest session and it’s the longest sitting of the Legislature. We go through the normal orders of the day, but one thing that makes this session very unique is that in Committee of the Whole, we go department by department and consider the budget. We approve the main estimates during this process we call the budget session. I’m sure that the people out there in the Northwest Territories are hanging on every word we say and they’re really enjoying this, but I have some issues with our process and how we do this.
In the 18 years that I have been an MLA, I have never seen the Caucus, the full Assembly ever come together and question the process and protocols of how we pass this budget. I think anybody watching this can pretty well conclude that most of the dialogue, debate and work that goes into the budget has gone into it behind closed doors before it ever gets to the floor of this House. When it gets to the floor of the House, there is no opportunity to add anything to the budget. We can delete things but we cannot add a thing. The people should know that. There are things we can do: we can hold up the passage of a department, we can make recommendations to the government, but by the time it gets here in the budget session, the budget is set except for the potential for deletions, which does not happen very often. We cannot add anything to the budget. So we spend an extraordinary amount of time, hours and hours and hours, sitting in Committee of the Whole going over the budget.
Myself, for one, I do not have a huge appetite for micro-examining every line in our budget. I am here, I hope, to make a difference and I would like to think that, as legislators, we are here to set broad policy direction and vision for our government. I have no interest in being an extension of the bureaucracy. I am not a bureaucrat. I am not a technocrat. I do think I have a vision and I am here in this Legislature because I want to see good things happen. I want to see change. I want to see progressive change.
I want to say today that I seriously question why we do not have more processes in place that would allow our public – because that’s what this is all about, it’s what the public sees – to see creative, spontaneous and lively, real debate in this House. Our processes do not allow for that and that is a sad thing. I’d like to see it changed.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Item 20, consideration in Committee of the Whole of bills and other matters: Tabled Document 9-17(4), NWT Main Estimates, 2013-2014, and Bill 1, Tlicho Statutes Amendment Act, with Mrs. Groenewegen in the chair.
